Amphibian Conservation

Amphibians are the most threatened group of animals in the world with nearly half of all species at risk. This crisis is considered the greatest extinction in history; it’s also the Earth’s sixth mass biological extinction. While previous mass extinctions have been driven by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes, the current die-off can be associated directly with human activity.

The Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) is standing up to this extinction crisis. The National Amphibian Conservation Center has specially designed, bio-secure rooms behind the scenes where cooperative breeding programs – called Species Survival Plans – are underway for the Wyoming toad, Puerto Rican crested toad, Panamanian golden frog, crawfish frog and dusky gopher frog.

Recently, 5,615 critically endangered Puerto Rican crested toad tadpoles bred at the Detroit Zoo were released in the El Tallonal biological reserve in Puerto Rico, joining more than 47,000 tadpoles of this species released into the wild in the past decade. Also in 2017, nearly 700 Wyoming toad tadpoles bred at the Zoo were released into a protected wetland in the Laramie Basin of Wyoming, bringing the total to more than 8,000 tadpoles, toadlets and toads released since the program began in 1995.

Click here to learn more about the DZS’s amphibian conservation work.

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